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25 October 2011 – The global demand for secondary education has risen exponentially, says a new United Nations report, which adds that governments, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are having a hard time keeping up and many children are being left out. The 2011 Global Education Digest, released today by the Institute for Statistics of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), says there are only enough seats for 36 per cent of children who want to enrol in secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa.

“There can be no escape from poverty without a vast expansion of secondary education,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. “This is a minimum entitlement for equipping youth with the knowledge and skills they need to secure decent livelihoods in today’s globalized world.”

Yet, the agency adds, a child in the last grade of primary school only has at best a 75 per cent chance of making the transition to lower secondary school in about 20 countries, the majority of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. The region also has a shortage of secondary school teachers.

Africa’s educational systems are suffering from growing pains.  More students than ever are enrolling in school, but the supply of teachers and infrastructure have not kept up with demand. Educators say about 80 percent of African students are completing primary school -- thanks in part to the push to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. They call for universal primary education by the 2015. John Daniel, the president and CEO of the intergovernmental organization the Commonwealth of Learning, says success is bringing more challenges. SCOPESecondary school students at KwaMhlanga High School in Mpumalanga, South Africa. “The African countries achieved in 10 years what it took many developed countries 100 years to do two centuries ago," he said, "and they don’t have many resources left over to do secondary.”

“Girls who have secondary education … have on average worldwide one-point-eight fewer children than girls who don’t," he said. "That’s a difference of two or three billion to the population of the world by 2050. There is [one educational researcher, Joel Cohen] who says therefore girls’ education is best way of stopping population growth and climate change.”

The Commonwealth of Learning proposes open schools, using new technologies and new ways to meet the needs of school aged children, drop-outs, mothers who want to learn at home and working adults. He said the schools cut costs and save time by using new technologies, including cell phones. Secondary school curricula can be created and shared among schools without costly intellectual property rights.

THE Federal Government has said that the old Senior Secondary Education curriculum will be phased out in September, 2011 to give way for the implementation of the New Senior Secondary Education curriculum developed by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC).

Education is a key ingredient of the political crisis facing Arab states. Superficially, the education profile of the region is starting to resemble that of East Asia. The past two decades have witnessed dramatic advances in primary and secondary school enrollment, with a step-increase in tertiary education. Many governments have increased public spending on education. The 7% of GDP that Tunisia invests in the sector puts the country near the top of the global league table for financial effort.

In Egypt, the education group most likely to be unemployed is university level and above, followed by post-secondary. Around one quarter of the country’s male university graduates are unemployed, and almost half of its female graduates.

For all the expansion of access and investment in education, the Arab states have some of the world’s worst performing education systems. The problems start early. In this year’s Global Monitoring Report we carry a table showing the distribution of performance across different countries in reading test scores at grade 4. In Kuwait, Qatar and Morocco, over 90% of students scored below the lowest benchmark, indicating that they lacked even basic comprehension.  In fact, these countries held the bottom three positions in a group of 37 countries covered.

Tanzania and Burundi, for instance, have recorded a 99 per cent enrolment rate into the first grade of primary school.The pertinent question is: How effective are these funds in retaining children in school? Once enrolled, how long can the pupils be expected to last in the education system, and how many years of schooling, on average, are actually attained by East African pupils?

However, East Africa is faring badly a 9.1 years, equivalent to a pupil completing primary school, but dropping out of high school. The average number of school years actually completed regionally was a mere 4.7 years. The scenario is particularly dismal in Burundi, where on average pupils completed only 2.7 years of school.

According to the Global Education Digest 2010 published by Unesco, in the late 1990s, developing countries began to recover some of the educational ground lost in the 1980s, when enrolments stagnated or even declined in sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In fact, the pace of progress accelerated since 2000 and if trends between 2000 and 2008 continue, the increase in school life expectancy in the current decade will be three times the level achieved in the 1970s.In sub-Saharan Africa, school life expectancy nearly doubled from 4.4 years to 8.4 years in the past 30 years. Despite this progress, the region has the lowest number of school years — almost half of the number of years in North America and Western Europe (16.0 years).

"I know that my life will change for the better when I complete school; I hope to become a teacher so that I can serve as a role model for the many girls who give up on education as soon as they give birth or get married," Gor said.

Like Gor, many girls in Muhuru Bay, with a population of about 25,000, have a slim chance of a secondary education as only four public schools in the area admit both genders. The few private schools are out of reach for many poor parents.

"We are trying to reverse this trend by conducting frequent assessments of schools as well as holding education days where we inform parents and pupils on the importance of education. We welcome efforts by individuals and charitable organizations to sensitize the communities on keeping children in school."

even though the government has subsidised secondary school education, parents are still digging deep into their pockets. GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetA" ); GA_googleCreateDomIframe('google_ads_div_AllAfrica_Story_InsetA' ,'AllAfrica_Story_InsetA'); Each student, under the Free Secondary Education introduced in 2008, is allocated Sh10,265 a year. But the burden on parents remains heavy because of other requirements. For Ms Maureen Ngui, shopping for her first born-daughter, Grace Aurelia Akinyi, life has never been more hectic. "I have spent Sh30,000 on personal effects and textbooks yet it seems I am only halfway through," she said.

Under the "Child Friendly Schools" campaign launched in partnership with the United Nations, the students who will be joining secondary schools today shall not be allocated duties in the roster until the middle of the first term.

The principals are also organising a series of talks, commonly referred to as barazas, to hear the views of the students on various issues.

The free primary education, which is also compulsory, saw many children, particularly from poor families; enjoy an opportunity to be in school. Based on reports by the Ministry of Education, the number of boys and girls enrolled in primary school has risen from five million to a staggering eight million.

According to the latest Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS), 40 percent of adolescent girls without any education are either pregnant or have already become mothers. In addition, for those girls with only a primary school education, 26 percent are mothers compared to an eight percent of those who have a secondary school education or higher.

"This shows that the impact of secondary and even college education can delay child- bearing and therefore give girls an opportunity to pursue their dreams," expounds Nelly Mwangi, a teacher in Nairobi.

A year after the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system has been implemented, and two years since the introduction of the new grading system in schools affiliated to the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE), teachers appear to be groping in the dark. There are vast variations in the manner in which the system is being implemented.

Though the approach, when it was first introduced, was touted as being child-centric, many teachers feel that its implementation is not practical, given the reality of large class sizes in many schools.

“It is a very detailed system of evaluation, and teachers are ill-equipped to do it. It’s too idealistic,” remarked Raman.

It’s older, more experienced teachers – not younger, so-called digital natives – who are experimenting more with new technology in the classroom, a new report suggests.And although Twitter, YouTube and mobile devices have infiltrated Canadian classrooms, the study finds that educators have serious concerns that students are “not-so-savvy surfers” – too prone to accept information published online as fact and be led astray.

“At the ground level, across the country, our impression is that teaching how to use technology takes precedence over the key critical thinking and ethical skills that youth really need,” said Matthew Johnson, director of education at Media Awareness Network, the not-for-profit group that conducted the research.

The report’s scope is small, involving just 10 elementary and high school teachers from across the country, but detailed. Titled Young Canadians in a Wired World, it is the third phase in an ongoing examination by Media Awareness Network of youth online. It takes a narrow focus on how teachers are using technology in the classroom and what barriers exist to maximizing these newest teaching tools.